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Out of the ashes of the failed Obamacare repeal effort in the Senate now rises a significant and welcome bipartisan effort to fix some of the problems plaguing the Affordable Care Act.

Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Maryville, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced Tuesday that he would hold hearings the week of Sept. 4 to find a way to secure the future viability of the individual health market.

Yes, this is long overdue and should have been the approach taken in lieu of the secretive repeal-and-replace efforts of the last few months.

However, Alexander deserves credit for deciding to act instead of staying silent and doing nothing before the August recess and for reaching out to HELP Committee Democratic Ranking Member Patty Murray of Washington.

“In my opinion, any solution that Congress passes for a 2018 stabilization package would need to be small, bipartisan and balanced. It should include funding for the cost-sharing reductions, but it also should also include greater flexibility for states in approving health insurance policies,” Alexander said in a statement.

The individual market is where people buy health insurance for themselves as opposed to receiving coverage from an employer. There are 18 million people nationwide who are served by them – 11 million who buy policies from an Affordable Care Act exchange, and 80 percent of those receive subsidies to afford the coverage.

However, because of the rising cost to serve sicker-than-expected people, insurance companies have been pulling out of county markets across the country or making requests to states to raise premiums.

However, there is great concern raised by Kaiser and Tennessee Insurance Commissioner Julie Mix McPeak that the markets could be in peril in 2018 because of uncertainty over health care reform efforts in Congress.

The failure of an Obamacare repeal has removed one of those uncertainties: the attempted elimination of the individual mandate for Americans to buy health insurance.

However, it will be up to the Trump Administration to continue cost-sharing reduction payments for insurers as an incentive to continue to offer individual policies, at least until a more permanent solution is found. The deadline to act is Sept. 27, Alexander said, because insurers have until then to decide whether to participate in individual marketplaces in 2018.

The health care industry is a top economic driver in Tennessee – a state with the dichotomy of having great health care options but poor health care outcomes.

In Tennessee 350,000 people have individual plans and, of those, 234,125 people are enrolled in ACA exchange plans. Statewide most counties have only one insurance option on the ACA exchange, and about 20 percent have two, according to Kaiser. The average nationwide is 4.3.

There are three companies that offer plans in Tennessee: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Cigna and Humana.

However, Humana is exiting the market in 2018, leaving West Tennessee counties like Shelby, Fayette, Tipton, Lauderdale and Haywood with only one option (Cigna) next year.

Meanwhile, Oscar Health Insurance Co. is entering the market in the Nashville area in 2018 and BCBST is returning to Knoxville in 2018 after having exited for a year.

If Alexander’s efforts are successful, it will create conditions for potentially lowering the cost of insurance, keeping insurers in the market and inviting more to come in, thus, offering more affordable options.

There are still many problems to fix – including the issue of nearly half a million working poor Tennesseans being unable to buy affordable health insurance.

However, Alexander’s move is a good step forward and should model future efforts to get at the Affordable Care Act problems that need to be repaired.

Opinion and Engagement Editor David Plazas wrote this editorial on behalf of The Tennessean Editorial Board and the USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him at dplazas@tennessean.com or tweet to him at @davidplazas.

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